The hunger strikes at Yarl’s Wood are part of a tradition whose ongoing necessity shames us all. From their very inception, immigration detention and the hostile environment have typified a logic of dehumanisation. Whether non-citizens are entitled to the basic goods and services necessary to live a dignified life raises an urgent question about what kind of society we want to live in.

"The best way I — and by extension, hopefully more of us — can learn anything from what happened to me, what has been happening to me, what has been happening to all of us, is to look this ambiguity right in the face"